Adele makes history with 800,000 sales

Adele’s new album 25 has sold more than 800,000 copies in its first week of release – the highest ever figure for a single UK chart week.

The album shifted more copies than the next 86 albums in the chart combined, and has become the first album to sell more than 100,000 downloads in a week.

In fact, 252,423 of the album’s 800,307 sales were digital with the rest on CD.

Official Charts Company chief executive Martin Talbot said: “The statistics surrounding the album are staggering.”

He added: “No album has ever sold 800,000 copies to reach number one in the history of British music.”

The previous record was held by Oasis’s Be Here Now, which reached number one with sales of 696,000 in 1997. However that album only went on sale three days before the end of the chart week.

Before this, no album had sold 100,000 copies in a single week this year. Adele’s 25 has sold 800,307.

That is more than the combined sales of the last 19 number one albums in the weeks they topped the chart.

More than 300,000 people bought 25 on its first day of release.

Ed Sheeran held the previous record for weekly digital album sales, with 95,709. Adele’s 25 has eclipsed that with 252,423 downloads.

25 has reached double platinum status already.

It still has some way to go to match the sales of Adele’s last album 21, which is owned by 4.8 million people in the UK.

Martin Talbot said: “What the future holds for 25 will unfold over the coming weeks and months, of course – but we can all be absolutely sure that more records will be toppled as Adele fever grips the nation in the run-up to Christmas.”

Adele’s third album has also “has done the seemingly impossible”, according to Billboard magazine , and sold more than three million in one week in the US.

That is the highest one-week US sales since data tracking began in 1991, overtaking the previous record of 2.4 million set by N’Sync’s No Strings Attached in 2000.

The singer has also just announced her first tour since 2011 , playing in arenas across Europe from next February.